In the same paragraph he speaks of his having given mankind "the deepest book it possesses, namely Zarathustra," and he adds that he is about to give it "the most independent" (probably referring to The Antichristian).[1] In another passage he says generally that he has given the Germans their "deepest books"—and adds mockingly, "reason enough for the Germans not understanding a word of them."[2] In still another place he urges that German philologists and even Goethe had not comprehended the wonderful Greek phenomenon, covered by the name of Dionysus—that he was the first to penetrate to its interior significance.[3] a
Turning now to the material published since his death, we find him for one thing daring to put Aristotle himself in the wrong as to the essential meaning of tragedy—"I have first discovered the tragic."[4] Even as early as 1881, he confided to his sister his belief that he was the topmost point of moral reflection and labor in Europe.[5] He reiterates the belief to Brandes in 1888, saying that he fancies himself a capital event in the crisis of valuations;[6] to Strindberg he even says, "I am powerful enough to break the history of humanity into two parts." b In Ecce Homo he becomes almost lyric in his confidence: "No one before me knew the right way, the way upwards; first from me on are there again hopes, tasks, ways of culture to be prescribed—I am their happy messenger."[7] He notes of a certain day (30 September, 1888): "Great victory; a seventh day; leisurely walk of a god along the Po."[8] He feels that he has had, and has been, an extraordinary fortune, and writes with an extraordinary abandon and an almost childish irresponsibility—explaining who he is, how he has come to be what he is, why he has written such good books, and so on. It is as if he were somebody else and he were telling us about him. Let one note the account of the extraordinary mental conditions out of which the first part of Zarathustra
